Making good-looking angled weapons with Paint

I played Lizard War recently and the guns in that wad look pretty damn fine being made with Paint and all. I just wondered how it was done so well.

Take a look at my "attempt:"



Mine just looks like it's pointed angled but up instead of forward. What can I do to make it look better?

Ask me to do it.



Whipped it up in about 2 minutes in Paint.
No particular gun, but the USP was on my mind, so...

Bashe said:

What can I do to make it look better?

Practice.

There's no trick to it really. You just need to develop a better sense of how to angle things.

Edit: Actually there's a couple if things that could possibly make it easier, like drawing a horizon line and angled "guides" drawn from the center point of that line. But I dont see this working out too well in MSPaint. Cant hurt to try though.

Darkhaven said:

Ask me to do it.



Whipped it up in about 2 minutes in Paint.
No particular gun, but the USP was on my mind, so...

With proper shading and such that'd make a cool Flare Gun.

Thanks, but I'm no Scuba Steve ;)

What a coincidence, I just posted about the very same thing in Lizardcommando's thread...

http://www.doomworld.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27709

The bottom paragraph gives some suggestions to try to improve perspective. Mainly vanishing points.

I'm not sure if this was intended with the thread creation, so I apologize if this is out of line.

I read up on Scuba Steve's tutorials and tried to make a weapon in MS Paint and here are the results:


The normal frame that sits there when you walk and jazz.


When you first hit the fire button, it starts to initiate its fire sequence.


It is about to fire.


Boom. As it fires.


The frame after it fires. As this is a chain-gun replacement, it is rapid fire so it has to fire sprites.



And here is an animation of it firing.

It's a Tooth-pick gun. It fires mint and sometimes chocolate-mint flavored toothpicks.

You're fired.

Well, I tried. :(

cough

I kind of cheat with the muzzle flash. I just take the muzzle flash frames and paste the whole gun and then add the flash to the gun. I just do that because I'm no good at aligning the flash to the gun. :(

Here's my second attempt at making a Paint brand gun:



It looks like it's actually facing forward, but there is a lot to be desired yet.

Bashe said:

I kind of cheat with the muzzle flash. I just take the muzzle flash frames and paste the whole gun and then add the flash to the gun. I just do that because I'm no good at aligning the flash to the gun. :(

Here's my second attempt at making a Paint brand gun:

http://img34.exs.cx/img34/5690/chgga0.gif

It looks like it's actually facing forward, but there is a lot to be desired yet.

Now that looks a bit like my style. :p

Lizardcommando said:

Now that looks a bit like my style. :p

Heh, sorry. Your wad inspired me, so I kinda stole your machine gun. Yours was a LOT bigger though.

I made a shotgun, but it's stupid looking.

I find the difficult part of drawing weapon graphics is not the actual gun, but the hand holding it, especially if you're looking to match the original Doom style gloved hand. How's about a tutorial on that Scuba? You seem to have drawing Doom-style hands down pretty well.

Here guys, I threw together a quick tutorial on Vanishing Points.



Step One I've drawn guide lines from the center of the image that represent where the barrel of the gun will be (both top and bottom) and the bottom of the grip. Notice how the lines "vanish" into infinity at the center. All lines should correspond to the same distance perspective.



I have started to flesh out where the barrel's depth starts and ends. Since the barrel is a Cylinder (Rather a Right Cylinder, being a shape with two congruent circular areas and a rectangular area joining them)... Circles are drawn in between the two vanishing guidelines that represent the top and bottom of the barrel. Also vertical lines are drawn to indicate where the grip ends.



The guidelines are erased, and the shapes touched up. From here it should start to at least resemble the shape of a gun. Next step is to add detail, which will also adhere to the rules of vanishing points. I would recommend using a Layer capable art program like PSP, so you can start a new layer for the details, without drawing vanishing points all over your current base.

Jonathan, Sure I'd love to make a tutorial on creating Doom-esque hands. I have a special pallette for PSP I use, so I'll have to upload that too.

Looks shotgunney,Is that your Mossberg?

Heh, that's a cool tutorial considering is paint :D I stole doomguys hands for BarberDoom though :P I remember I was going to re-release BarberDoom as a modelpack for jDoom. Maybe I should try that :D MSPaint MD2s :D


Wow I really like saying :D
:D :D :D


:D

Nice tutoring, Scuba. I'll give it a shot when I'm making a Paint shotgun.

Oh, did I mention you are my star in the sky?

(...yes)

having some artistic talent would help too.

Well, I kinda suck at using Paint. I could draw the weapons or something to get an idea at least.

Practice vanishing points like Scuba mentioned on paper with a pencil, it will be easier.

Caco-Puff said:

Looks shotgunney,Is that your Mossberg?

Naw, I just threw it together in about 10 seconds just now.

omg scuba I followed your tutorial and I made a new weapon, yay!!

Cyb said:

omg scuba I followed your tutorial and I made a new weapon, yay!!

NEW FREEDOOM SHOTGUN I SAY

Woah, awesome, it looks 3-D.

You know Cyb, that's better than over half the things drawn in the idgames archive.

Scuba Steve said:

You know Cyb, that's better than over half the things drawn in the idgames archive.

Please dont make me think about those.

Scuba Steve said:

You know Cyb, that's better than over half the things drawn in the idgames archive.

so am I hired to make all the weapon sprites for 'ACTION DOOM 2: NEEDS MORE ACTION' then?! :D

Yes, you have shown much improvement since Massmouth 2's weapons.

Scuba Steve said:

Yes, you have shown much improvement since Massmouth 2's weapons.

in my defense, I didn't actually make those